Denis Davydov (1784-1839) and His Çekmen

Portrait of Denis Vasilyevich Davydov (1784-1839) by George Dow (1781-1829)

Few Russian poets before Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837) wrote verse as lively as that of Denis Davydov (1784-1839). A legendary soldier, Davydov was the bard of the hussar’s life, which, if you took his word for it, consisted of nothing but battle, women, and wine — not necessarily in that order. In his History of Russian Literature, D. S. Mirsky writes: “The diction in some [of Davydov’s poems] is rather unconventional, and occasionally his words have to be replaced by dots, but it is always full of spirit and great rhythmical go.” And so it’s not terribly surprising that Pushkin, as Mirsky goes on to report, “had a high opinion of his poetry and used to say that Davydov showed him the way to be original.”

In the poem below, from 1810, Davydov thanks Count Pavel Alexandrovich Stroganov (1772-1817), an important military commander, for the gift of a çekmen, a traditional long coat worn by Turkic peoples. This is the perfect attire, as Davydov sees it, for a descendant of Genghis Khan and Batu Khan, which Davydov believed himself to be.

In gratitude for the çekmen he gave me during the war of 1810 in Turkey

My forebear Genghis Khan, of blessed memory,
raider and scalawag with yard-long whiskers,
tornado on a dashing steed, descended briskly,
in dazzling armor, on the enemy,
his Tatar hand upraised, ready to slay
all that would stand in his heroic way.
Another venerable forebear — just as rude
as Genghis Khan, his grandfather — once stood
in open fields, among the clashing swords,
wearing his çekmen, lording over hordes.
I burn with the same flame as Genghis Khan;
like old Batu, I yearn to show my brawn.
So tell me, my dear Count, should I turn up
among the troops dressed like some French-bred fop,
tie a jabot around my neck and coif my hair,
look like a Lindor among whiskered bears?
Take pity on a poor descendant of Batu —
accept his silly verse in gratitude!

[…] History of Russian Literature written by D. S. Mirsky — whom I quoted just last week in my post on Denis Davydov — and to praise the broader account of the Russian literary field given by the authors of this […]

1917: Stories and Poems from the Russian Revolution is a collection of literary responses to one of the most cataclysmic events in modern world history. These expose the immense conflictedness and doubt, conviction and hope, pessimism and optimism which political events provoked among contemporary writers – sometimes at the same time, even in the same person. This dazzling panorama of thought, language and form includes work by authors who are already well known to the English-speaking world (Bulgakov, Pasternak, Akhmatova, Mayakovsky), as well as others, less well known, whose work we have the pleasure of encountering here for the very first time in English.